Friday, June 4, 2010

The idea here was basically to shift the frame of the mixtape so that it starts with what would traditionally be a last or second-to-last song and then have it cycle back around. Two instrumental tracks help this along, and for some reason this mix progresses from musical theme to musical theme a little faster than some of the others (or so it seems to me).

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

The general idea behind this tape was to use instrumentals to generate excitement and energy and then to let the following vocal tracks sort of gradually slow things down until the tape just coasted to a stop. It was also an opportunity to use both "Giving Up The Gun" and "It's Thunder And It's Lightning," which are two songs that recently grabbed me.

Also, watch the transition between tracks 10 and 11 - of all of them, that's the most drastic change. If it works, I'm not totally sure why.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

This tape was inspired by two things: the first track sounded like a great opening track for a mix and the last track sounded like a great closing track. Unfortunately, both lend themselves to being surrounded by less intense songs and neither is itself too intense. Managing the flow of this tape, then, was largely a matter of finding a way to reach some kind of high point.

Track 2's beginning measures are designed to imitate the opening measures of the song that follows track 1 on its original album - a trick I talked about in part 4 of the how-to series. Since the second track ends by slowing down the tempo and fading out, the next track pretty much had to be slower still; track 3, as a result, starts a series of five very subdued songs. I didn't notice this at first, but 3 through 6 alternate between soft, repetitive vocals and prominent, lyrical vocals - a phenomenon I'll have to think more about later. Track 7 concludes that set by stripping away all of the extra instrumentation and leaving more empty space between musical phrases, bringing the tape to its quietest place.

So as to not make a startling break with the rest of the tape, track 8 also begins with some folk-like acoustic strumming, but from there it moves into a much more complex and less traditional rhythm and chord progression that starts the tape moving towards its climax. Track 9 continues that weirdness, but drops some of the more uncommon instruments so that it can lead into the only halfway normal rock track on the mix, which is also its high point. The last three tracks are also united by their (relatively) prominent bass lines, which in other circumstances might not have been as important: having all of the acoustic tracks earlier in the mix, I suspect, highlights that similarity.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

This was a little more difficult to construct than maybe it should've been - everyone can think of a few canonical whistling songs, right, so how hard could it be? Well, as it turns out, those few canonical songs are either not too terribly similar to the others or else are too unserious to put on a mix ("Whistle While You Work," e.g.). The saving grace was that most of the reasonable songs I did find had a positive, upbeat tone, more or less. As a result, this is a much peppier mix than the stuff I usually put together.

In terms of flow, The Bangles are a workable midpoint between Paul Simon's relatively straightforward production and folk/Americana sound to The Drums and their Pixies-style surf guitars. That same overall sparsity of sound carries through into track 6, but since that track builds to a real musical climax I felt like that was a good place to switch gears (that's as opposed to "Let's Go Surfing," which pretty much stays on one level). "I Like Birds" brings back a less experimental, more traditional sound, which stays more or less the same for the rest of the tape.